Movie Reviews from
By John Ruch
© 1997 CM Media, Inc.
Ridicule (1997)
“Ridicule” certainly lives up to its name, opening with one man urinating onto another’s lap. They don’t even do that in “Grumpy Old Men.”
This peppy, savage comedy takes us back to the pre-Revolution court of Louis XVI, in which, we’re told, insult-humor was the way to the top. The best class clowns could humiliate their way into the king’s favor, though they could never be sure if their peers were laughing with them or at them.
The story follows a currently trendy art-house pattern: Honest little guy tries to succeed among the corrupt, pompous elite, the sort of thing that’s been done with mixed results in “Restoration” and “Angels and Insects.”
Our hero is Poncedulon de Malavoy, a country rube who comes to court looking for money to get a disease-breeding swamp drained. Like most country rubes, he’s far sharper than he looks, and quickly adapts to the court’s system of one-liner shoot-outs.
The drama, as usual, consists of wondering if he’ll be corrupted by the court, if he’ll marry the evil countess instead of the good country girl, and if he’ll win the inevitable duel.
Director Patrice Leconte (the fetish fiend behind “Monsieur Hire” and “The Hairdresser’s Husband”) and writer Remi Waterhouse mix things up with their decidedly weirdo sensibility. Instead of the typical good country girl, they have her as an improbably buxom scientist who tests a homemade diving suit in the local well. She and de Malavoy get turned on when they pollinate flowers together—not your average couple.
Then there are all the zingers, potent enough to drive people to suicide. When a sycophantic professor wannabe boasts of what a great addition he’d make to the Academy, a razor-tongued abbot responds, “Every harem has its eunuch.” Ouch.
There’s even something amusing about the film’s canned chamber music, which sounds like the “Donkey Kong” soundtrack. But the biggest triumph is probably the well-translated subtitles—all the jokes seem to work the way they were intended, anyway.
One oddity,
though: No matter how good the insult, nobody ever says, “Touché.” Another
French myth dispelled.